The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan

The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan

This sourcebook contains more than 160 documents and writings that reflect the development of Taiwanese literature from the early modern period to the twenty-first century. Selections include seminal essays in literary debates, polemics, and other landmark events; interviews, diaries, and letters by major authors; critical and retrospective essays by influential writers, editors, and scholars; transcripts of historical speeches and conferences; literary-society manifestos and inaugural journal prefaces; and governmental policy pronouncements that have significantly influenced Taiwanese literature.

These texts illuminate Asia’s experience with modernization, colonialism, and postcolonialism; the character of Taiwan’s Cold War and post–Cold War cultural production; gender and environmental issues; indigenous movements; and the changes and challenges of the digital revolution. Taiwan’s complex history with Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese colonization; strategic geopolitical position vis-à-vis China, Japan, and the United States; and status as a hub for the East-bound circulation of technological and popular-culture trends make the nation an excellent case study for a richer understanding of East Asian and modern global relations.

Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang is professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin. She is author of Literary Culture in Taiwan: Martial Law to Market Law;Transformations of a Literary Field: On Contemporary Taiwanese Fiction; and Modernism and the Nativist Resistance: Contemporary Chinese Fiction from Taiwan. She is the editor of Bamboo Shoots After the Rain: Contemporary Stories by Women Writers of Taiwan. Michelle Yeh is professor of Chinese literature at the University of California at Davis. She is the author, translator, and editor of Modern Chinese Poetry: Theory and Practice Since 1917; Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry; No Trace of the Gardener: Poems of Yang Mu; Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry; and A Lifetime Is a Promise to Keep: Poems of Huang Xiang. Ming-ju Fan is professor and director of the Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Her books in Chinese include Literary Geography: Spatial Reading of Taiwanese Fiction; Chronological Searches of Taiwanese Women’s Fiction; and Like a Box of Chocolate: Criticism on Contemporary Literature and Culture.